Monthly Archives: April 2017

In January, I bemoaned the fact that I did not get into Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter. My failure bugged me in the following months. In April, I couldn’t take it any more and rechecked the two books from the library. I finally read them. And came away with the same opinions I had in January, which sucks. But, to be fair, no book is going to appeal to everyone. Atwood and Gordimer are great authors. One deserves her Nobel. And the other should have gotten a Nobel already.

I struggle with Margaret Atwood, to be honest. I first read Atwood’s The Robber Bride in my senior year of high school and reread the novel again about two or three years later. I enjoyed The Robber Bride greatly. Maybe it is the acceptance, at the end, of a minor character’s coming out. Maybe it is the fact that the three protagonists are amazing women struggling with an amazing antagonist. Maybe I was just in a phase of my life that favored literary novels over science fiction and fantasy. I don’t quite know. But, I haven’t reread The Robber Bride inover ten years.

Subsequently, I’ve read or attempted to read other works by Margaret Atwood. I read her 1991 collection Wilderness Tips and found it rather uneven. And I attempted to read The Blind Assassin while still in college. I did not like it and dropped it. Later I tried reading Cat’s Eye several times over the course of a few years. And recently, I have wanted to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace (for my historical novel reading challenge). As anyone who read my January reading post knows, I hated The Handmaid’s Tale.

On to my thoughts now that I finally finished Cat’s Eye. The novel is, for me, a dull affair that really doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do. It does have similar themes to The Robber Bride, but I don’t think Atwood quite captures the emotional power. I just really never connected to Elaine’s midlife identity crisis/ reformation or her obsession with Cordelia and her role in Elaine’s later character formation.

At least I’ve finally read Cat’s Eye. Sucks that I never got into it.

I am less familiar with Nadine Gordimer’s work, but I first read her novel The House Gun in my senior year of high school. And really enjoyed it. I just never really continued to read her work even as I bought her short story collection Jump. In January, I wanted to correct that oversight.

Burger’s Daughter is an experiment. Gordimer is transitioning from traditional dialogue to a more difficult and complicated, for author and read, technique for conveying conversation. In this regard, Burger’s Daughter is rather successful, but it does not work completely.

The key is characterization and maintaining each character’s individuality.

My problem with Burger’s Daughter is just that, Burger’s Daughter. Rosa Burger is defined by her father. And by her father’s struggle. She never quite comes into her own as a character. She is always defined in relation to her father. Even in the end, one must wonder how much her decisions are based on what she wants or what has been instilled in her to want.

The problem is that Rosa Burger is rather flat. Her characterization is, honestly, timid. Rosa Burger never quite emerges as a compelling character.

I am disappointed that I didn’t like Burger’s Daughter. But I am glad I read it. It is inspirational, though perhaps not in ways Gordimer intends.

Will I continue to seek out Margaret Atwood and Nadine Gordimer’s work? Yes. I might not like some of their books, but I am willing to bet that there are several of their books I will enjoy.

It is common wisdom that Marvel Comics is nosediving in sales while DC is enjoying a current spike in sales. The most repeated and nauseating explanation is that Marvel is mired in off putting progressive politics and obsessed with removing and replacing classic heroes in the name of diversity (while a lot of heroes have been replaced recently, these changes are not likely to stick, they never do). Meanwhile, DC has learned its lesson and is retrenching in “classic” stories, which explains its recent spike in sales. I do not agree with this. There are numerous reasons why Marvel is declining. And numerous reasons why one should not expect DC to enjoy success for long.

I personally am displeased with the direction Marvel and DC have taken over the course of the past few years. Many of my reasons align very closely to those discussed by Comic Book Girl 19 (do check out her video “Controversy: I’m a part of the Marvel Comics Sales Slump.” Personally, I think her arguments are very cogent and well argued). (Another good article expounding a very good theory as to the problems plaguing Marvel comes from a Vox article titled “The Outrage Over Marvel’s Alleged Diversity Blaming, Explained” by Alex Abed-Santos) But I also have issues with Marvel and DC that are my own.

Personally, I think Marvel and DC’s problems lie with continuing fallout stemming from the comic book bubble bust twenty years ago. Neither Marvel, nor DC, have ever recovered. Ever since the market collapse, comics books have become a niche market struggling to survive. A dark age of comics, indeed.

Like CBG 19, I love the years and decades long narratives that comics provide. I agree with Faust of It’s Super Effective that comics are often best when there is a significant amount of soap opera mixed into a superhero science fantasy. CBG 19 is right when she points out that years worth of reading builds relationships with these characters. I like this long term relationship. And I miss it now that it is gone.

Again, like CBG 19 and numerous other fans, I bemoan the fact that so much narrative is devoted to annual or more frequent events that take valuable story telling time, especially when books get cancelled or relaunched every two years or less. There is no stability.

The constant reboots and relaunches are, honestly, money grabs rooted in neither Marvel or DC (or comic book retailers) learning their lesson from the burst comic book bubble of the 1990s. Yes, as CBG 19 points out, new number ones sale better than post number one issues. But does it really matter when issues two and three and beyond decline spectacularly? Even the best selling books?

Seriously, what is so wrong with just jumping in? I did with no problems. CBG 19 did. Thousands of comic book fans have.

And don’t get me started on the price. If I wanted to buy Marvel comics, I couldn’t afford many titles. I pity comic book journalists who have to buy every title. That has to be expensive.

Marvel has been singled out for a lot of abuse lately. But DC isn’t a ray of light. Many of the problems plaguing Marvel plague DC. Indeed, DC enjoyed Marvel’s unenviable position a few years ago.

DC Rebirth plays at being a return to “classic” stories. But I see it as just another reboot. Another cash grab. Some fans are buying in. And some aren’t.

I, honestly, don’t see a return to “classic” stories, whatever the hell that means.

But despite all the doom and gloom lately, there are rays of light. There are genuinely good books that have attracted a lot of fans, new and old.

In the end, the comic book industry have been dangling on the precipice for decades and they are still around. There is no reason to believe that either Marvel or DC will fall now even with all of their problems.

I want to write scholarly essays again. I was an English Lit. major in college. For the longest time, I planned on getting a doctorate and becoming an English professor in my own right with a, hopefully, impressive body of scholarly work to my name. Due to youthful incompetence and a lack of ambition, I never achieved getting my dreamed for doctorate. (It also doesn’t help that I am, honestly, a horrible teacher).

The dashing of my ambition does not mean that I’ve abandoned completely my scholarly bent. I just haven’t acted upon it.

I want to change that.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve wanted to do something new with the blog. I’m not happy with my blogging output. I want to change that.

I want to increase my output. And I want to diversify my writings for the blog. I want to write more reaction pieces. I want to write far more reviews. I want to write more about what I’m reading. I want to write about my writing. I want to write more essays. Etc.

Adding scholarly work sounds like a good idea.

But can I do it?

I haven’t written an academic paper in over ten years. I will be incredibly rusty. But I do think it is necessary. So I shall write. And write some more.

Hopefully, by the end of April, I will have a plan as to the exact changes I want to bring to the blog.

My reading continued to be a disappointment in March, but I am enjoying more of the books I’m reading. So, not everything is doom and gloom.

I already reviewed Every Heart a Doorway and The Collapsing Empire, so I will just mention them here.

On to the rest of the books.

I started the month reading Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey. It is a retelling of The Tempest. I read the first chapter or two and set it aside. I am not a fan of Carey’s style.

I also didn’t care for Chris Colfer’s Stranger Than Fanfiction. Colfer isn’t a terrible writer, but he needs to rein in his camp and metafictional fanboy impulses. I genuinely hope he improves.

Wanting to read some classic science fiction, I tried Sherri S. Tepper’s Grass. The descriptions are lovely. The story is boring.

I finally read Kirstin Valdez Quade’s Night at the Fiesta. I enjoyed the collection very much. I especially liked “Nemecia” and “Mojave Rats.” I will keep my eye on Valdez Quade’s future work.

My success with Night at the Fiesta inspired me to seek out a number of short story collections (with much less success). Among these books are: Difficult Women by Roxane Gay, The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Tenth of December by George Saunders, Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke, The World to Come by Jim Sheppard, and Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh.

Keeping with George Saunders, I attempted Lincoln in the Bardo. Oh my, that book is weirdly structured.

After my success with Leviathan Wakes, I moved on to Abaddon’s Gate after Caliban’s War. I grow less impressed with The Expanse as the series progresses. A lot of my issues lie with the world building. But I also feel James S.A. Corey fall into the George R.R. Martin trap, too many point of view characters disrupt the narrative.

I’ve been wanting to read Brain Staveley’s The Emperor’s Blades for years (ever since I listened to a podcast interview with Staveley). I finally got around to it. I feel a world building rant coming on. And I wanted to like this book. Damn it.

I had the most success this month, honestly, with several history books I read for research. These books are: Life and Society in the Hittite World by Trevor Bryce, Byzantium Greatness and Decline by Charles Diehl (translated by Naomi Walford), and Lords of the Horizon by Jason Goodwin. All of these are good. The best book is by far Life and Society in the Hittite World. Byzantium Greatness and Decline is outdated (but hey, it is what my local library has). And Lords of the Horizon is a good popular introduction to the Ottoman Empire.

I also had some success with the comics I read this month. Among those are: Scarlet Witch Volume 2 World of Witchcraft by James Robinson, The Mighty Thor Volume 1 Thunder in Her Veins by Jason Aaron, Batman Volume 1 I am Gotham by Tom King, Detective Comics Volume 1 Rise of the Batmen by James Tynion IV, and Wonder Woman Volume 1 The Lies by Greg Rucka. I really liked Scralet Witch. I enjoyed The Mighty Thor though I am tired of the Roxxon Malekith plot, disliked the handling of Loki, and have issues with Aaron’s world building. I am not a fan of either Batman comic I read. I would much prefer James Tynion IV writing a dedicated Tim Drake book. And the first volume of Wonder Woman Rebirth surprised me. But I am not a fan Rucka’s rewritting of Wonder Woman’s history so soon after the last rewritting of her history. I just really liked the handling of Cheetah. I feel a comic book rant coming on.

The Flow, the sole means of traveling faster than light, is shifting away from the human occupied worlds of the Interdependency. Can the heroes wrangle competing factions to save humanity? The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi has the beginning of the answer. (What do you expect from the first book in a series?) A fast paced space opera, The Collapsing Empire is a fun read with some serious issues (mainly I have major nitpicks regarding the world building).

The Collapsing Empire is fast paced. Amazingly so. The reader zips through the story wanting more.

The plot is fun. Reading how the protagonists work their ways into position to start the process of saving humanity against entrenched political corruption, sociopathic ambition, and endemic structural weakness is, honestly, a joy.

The main protagonist is Cardenia Wu, or, as she is formally styled, Emperox Grayland II. The bastard daughter of the previous emperox, she finds herself thrust into saving humanity from a position of power she never wanted.

Supporting her are Kiva Lagos, from the wealthy Lagos Guild, and Marce Claremont, a flow physicist on the run who has key information on the Flow’s shift. A foul mouthed force of nature, Kiva comes close to stealing the book. All three major characters are fascinating, but standard space opera character types.

(The villains, again, are standard character types. And very obvious.)

The biggest problem with The Collapsing Empire is thinking too hard about the world building. And the scientific process.

The Collapsing Empire takes place, at the least, in the 3500s. The Flow has been the fundamental bedrock of human civilization for over a thousand years. The Flow has shifted at least twice, stranding two worlds (one of them Earth) from the rest of humanity. In all that time, and with the home world of humanity lost, the Flow is still little understood? Really? Come on. The Flow should be far more understood than it is within the context of the novel.

An added complication to the study, or lack thereof, of the Flow is the obvious problem with the scientific method and peer review presented in the novel. Peer review is mentioned twice in key moments. One character is criticized for not peer reviewing her findings. The chastising character even references the fact that he, himself, needed peer review to prevent himself from making the same mistakes. But, he is satisfied with his work being peer reviewed by only one other person and treats it as sufficient. Should not peer review be more extensive (and therefore alleviating some of the political problems that arise in the novel)? Then again, that would kill the plot.

(To be fair to Scalzi, a lot of space opera, and science fiction in general, have serious problems when it comes to actual science.)

Humans, again, are vastly more advanced in 3500 than they are in 2017. Even in the harshest environments, humanity should be either able to terraform their new home worlds or adapt themselves to their new environments. The fall of the Interdependency should not result in humanity eventually dying out except for those on End, the only world humanity occupies that is in any way similar to Earth.

These world building problems are necessary for the plot to work, however. The immediacy of the collapse of the Interdependency is lessened if the coming shift in the Flow is widely known about. And, again, the economic structure of the Interdependency makes it impossible for humans to survive on their own even if humans should be able to adapt to their new environments.

Clearly, the world building bugs me to no end. I wish it did not. But it does. And consequently, my enjoyment of the novel is lessened by asking these world building questions. The Collapsing Empire is a fun read. But can it escape the collapse of its world building? For me, it cannot.